Yahoo and comScore Partner to Expand Global Access to Ad Measurement

During the Digital Content NewFronts in New York City last week, Ned Brody, head of the Americas at Yahoo, unveiled the details of a global partnership between comScore and Yahoo that will provide the industry with more robust campaign measurement for video, display, and mobile advertising. Through this partnership, Yahoo will be integrating comScore validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) into its ad serving and reporting platforms, enabling clients to more seamlessly use vCE data for media buys.

Improved Workflow: vCE will be integrated directly into Yahoo’s ad platform, enabling near-real-time access to valuable campaign optimization metrics within the existing workflow of media planners and buyers. Tagging will be managed directly by Yahoo.

Independent Third-Party Metrics: Yahoo boasts one of the largest ad serving and reporting platforms with an expansive global presence. The integration of neutral, third-party metrics from comScore creates greater accountability across the industry.

Global Access: This partnership will also enable access to vCE on a global basis. With Yahoo’s large global ad serving footprint, vCE metrics can be expanded to a larger number of reporting geographies.

The solution will first be available on display and video buys for U.S. advertisers this summer, with plans to offer on mobile buys as well as to be available to international advertisers in later phases of the partnership.

In a press release announcing the partnership, Brody said, “Yahoo is dedicated to simplifying the experience for advertisers so that they can spend more time focusing on what inspires them: capturing their customers’ attention through great storytelling.” He added, “There is a growing need for marketers to easily plan, buy, and measure across screens and ad formats. Offering a standard unit of measurement across screens throughout the life of a campaign is a big step toward meeting that need.”

In the same release, Serge Matta, president and chief executive (CEO) of comScore, said, “This partnership between comScore and Yahoo brings accountability to digital advertising and helps put it on the same playing field as TV.” He continued, “It also means that we can significantly expand the vCE footprint by incorporating it into places where people want to use comScore data and making it more widely available to global brand marketers. We look forward to working with Yahoo to improve our clients’ digital advertising performance.”

Industry Support for the Yahoo-comScore Partnership

Industry reaction to last week’s announcement has been generally positive.

John Nitti, president of activation at ZenithOptimedia, said, “We are excited about what the Yahoo-comScore partnership will mean for vCE on a global scale. Increased accessibility of campaign key performance indicators (KPIs) helps us optimize the performance of our clients’ campaigns and pay off our Live ROI proposition.”

Amanda Richman, president of Starcom USA, echoed his sentiment, saying, “In an increasingly complex marketplace, this integration simplifies our work and amplifies the opportunity for cross-screen planning and measurement.”

And Domenic Venuto, global president of data and technology at VivaKi, said, “This partnership has enormous implications up and down the digital advertising ecosystem. We recognized the potential of vCE early on and have worked to implement it into our SkySkraper data solution for this reason. We know the comScore partnership with Yahoo will deliver broader and more actionable campaign intelligence to all Yahoo marketers. Not only will it expand the availability of real-time campaign metrics across ad formats on a global basis, but it also means more data on which to base decisions.”

It remains to be seen whether the feelings surrounding this partnership will remain positive when it becomes widely available this summer, but for now the announcement is being met with critical acclaim.

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GroupM predicts that global ad spend will top $547 billion next year, up from $524 billion this year. While television will still capture the biggest share of that 12-figure pie (41%), digital's share will grow from 31% to 33%.